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Windsor Marmalade

A marmalade made from sliced oranges and lemons, boiled with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Windsor Marmalade

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin.

  2. Soak the slices in the water for 48 hours.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the mixture down to half the quantity.

  2. Heat the sugar in a 300°F (150°C) oven before adding it to the orange mixture.

  3. Add the sugar and boil again until it jellies.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Supply bitter peel flavour and pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Lemons
Add acidity and pectin, helping the mixture set and balancing the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, at high concentration, helps it gel and keep.

The step that matters

Boil until it jellies. Setting depends on pectin, acid and sugar reaching the right concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves the marmalade runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff or dark and dull the flavour.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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